Le Show; 2009-01-04

From deep inside your radio, meet Harry the Swinger. I am speaking remotely. I'm in Los Angeles. He's in New Orleans, but that's where he should be. A special guest who is in the home stretch of completing a remarkable project in New Orleans that you may or may not have heard about, but you still have the opportunity to experience. But enough intro to the intro. Here's the here's the intro itself. His name is Dan Cameron, and the project in question is a sprawling spectacular art biennial in New Orleans called Prospect One. And the reason we haven't talked about it up till now is sadly because I needed the time to see it in order to talk about it with some degree of knowledge of it. But anyway, Dan, welcome. Thank you, Harry. Thanks for having me here. Thank you. And let me just start with the thing that amazes me most about it, which is that you did it at all. Where did the idea come

from to do a huge art biennial in New Orleans? Well, I guess the germs of the idea came from some phone calls that friends of mine made to me in the week after the levies broke in August in Wallach by that time early September of 2005. And these are friends who were just placed around the country and knew that I was a big fan of all things New Orleans and that I was contemplating spending more time here doing things in the future. I'm originally in New Yorker, but I got hooked on Jazz Fest and from there, you know, one thing leads to another. The old story. At the old story. And these friends said, you know, Dan, we're thinking of having a conversation here in New Orleans when we all get back to town about the cultural rebuilding of the city, not the bricks and mortar, but really how does the culture rebuild itself and reconstitute itself. And these are all people in the art world, artists, collectors, people who run galleries, curators. And I said, count me in. So that conversation happened finally towards the end of January

2006. And I suppose it was the combination of two things that happened that day, the first of which was to experience firsthand what had happened in the Lower Ninth Ward. And some of the surrounding areas just going from block to block in neighborhood to neighborhood and seeing the scale, the epic scale, the devastation. And then later that day meeting with a group of about 200 representatives of the New Orleans art world, who all were kind of looking to me and to other people in the panel for some fresh ideas. And in the middle of something that I said that was in disagreement with something that somebody else on the panel said, I blurred it out the idea that I thought New Orleans really could probably benefit from a biennial because the United States doesn't have one of these big international art biennials. And at the time you were still at the Whitney? I was at the New Museum of Contemporary Art. And I had been there for about 11 years and was contemplating thinking about my future. They had just broken ground on a brand new building

on the Bowery and the Lower East Side. The New Bowery. And I was itching to, I had been the only senior curator, the kind of the main cook and bottle washer. But because they were more than doubling in size, they had hired some other curators. And I thought, well, you know, maybe I've kind of done my time here. And it was right around that moment when suddenly this notion of creating something for New Orleans that would help the city get back on its feet in artistic terms, but also be a tourist venture, something that would attract tens of thousands of people to come to New Orleans, get hotels, spend their money, eat in restaurants, and most importantly see a really world-class art spread all over the city. And how long from that disagreement that led to that light bulb to the time that you decided, okay, that's what I'm going to do. Almost three years. Wow. It took almost three years. So, in 2006, there was a lot of different trial

balloons hoisted up into the air, most of which didn't work. And by the end of the year, I had finally nailed down some seed money. And by the January of 2007, I'd started a company, which is called US Biennial. And right now, US Biennial does exactly one thing. We produce and grow and raise money for prospect New Orleans. This is prospect one. And then we hope to be going on to prospect two, three, four, and five so that it becomes not an annual right, which people in New Orleans, as you know, are very comfortable with, but a biennial right because it takes a couple years to get one of these things off the ground. Let's talk a little bit about the thing itself, to get people a picture of what it is that you've raised up in New Orleans. It covers everything from standard art institutions like the Museum of Art, the Contemporary Arts Center, the African American Museum, to sites in the Lower Ninth Ward, both in the most devastated and in

the most recovered areas. So that going there, you see both the worst and the best of the Lower Ninth as it stands today. You take people on this really epic journey through New Orleans and put very strong and very individual art in all of these settings. I've only been to one biennial before, which is Venice. And there, everything is, if I don't miss recall what I saw there, everything is in pavilions, right? Most of it is in pavilions that are located in the Jardini. And then there's a giant building out in back called the Arsinale, which has another big chunk of the Venice Biennale. And then in the last, like eight or ten years, they've been increasingly spreading out through other parts of the city, like San Marco and Jadeco. So now when you see the Venice Biennale, you do wind up doing a little bit like what you do today in New Orleans,

to see Prospect One, which is you go to the official sites, and then you also start incorporating more and more parts of the city that up until recently haven't been thought of as tourist attractions at all. Yeah, I mean, you have one piece in an old furniture store, and it dawned on me as I was standing and looking at the stuff in there, both yours and the satellite art that surrounds it. Gee, the last time I was in here was to buy a crappy old TV when I was first moving into my place in New Orleans. So the locations have obviously odd and individual resonances, but clearly it was your part of your purpose to take people out of just the institutions and take them into parts of New Orleans that these people might not otherwise see. Yes, that was a question. Yes, it was my idea, but it wasn't entirely my idea here. It was also the idea of the artists themselves. You know, when you do a project like this, you sort of leverage out your own past and your own reputation as a curator to try to bring in artists who have a very strong international

reputation. So in our case, we have artists coming from about 35 different countries, almost all of those artists visited New Orleans in the year, year and a half prior to the opening of Prospect One. So for many of them, the opportunity to come to the city meant the freedom to look around and to browse the city and start poking around in places where, again, tourists don't usually go and very often out of town artists don't usually go either. And it was in fact one artist from Los Angeles, Mark Bradford, who actually set up the conversation with Keith Calhoun and Chandra McCormick, who are just in the Lower Ninth Ward to get that particular part of the city energized and get it very actively involved in Prospect One. To the point where now we have about a dozen projects just in that one section of town, but I was very struck by the fact that New Orleans, one of its great strengths, culturally speaking, is its architectural history. And what I was interested in working with was not just the gems of that history, but as you

mentioned in the case the Universal Furniture Store, buildings and spaces that maybe weren't considered landmarks and wouldn't be considered landmarks, but that had a very particular character of their own. Universal, which again you mentioned, you went there to buy a piece of furniture, well after the storm it was kind of wrecked and then the precinct, the local police precinct, which didn't have, they'd been washed out, they moved in. It's on track to becoming a neighborhood healing center, but since it's in the St. Claude Arts District, a bunch of local artists got together and convinced the people who were developing it for a healing center to talk to us and see if one of the Prospect One projects might go in there, and if that were to be the case then they could start bringing in lots of community artists as well. And that's basically what you have now, you have a big sprawling group show, you have this one Prospect One installation by Pierre Gil, who are a French team working together, and then you have the local police precinct and everybody

gets along just great. Yeah, it's it's pretty amazing experience to go into. As I say at place where last time I was in it, it was you know the home of $400 TVs and and see all that all that happening around you. People are a little surprised to hear you weren't there being booked on some kind of a, you know, misdemeanor charge, but no, no, I'm fine. I guess that's not your part of town. No, that was that was that was all trumped up. People who know New Orleans have to ask this question, people who are outside the city may be intrigued by it. What was what has been the response of city hall to this thing happening in in the city? Well, that's a little bit of a touchy subject actually, Harry. I'm sorry. That's sort of what I do. Yes, well, you know, city hall, it's a little bit of a different animal than then New Orleans is used to. It's not the kind of cultural tourism that that forms the meat and potatoes if you want. Well, it's not beardedies either.

No, it's not. And I think that that if you look at the statistics for biennials and you sort of notice that when they succeed that they are capable of drawing, you know, hundreds of thousands of visitors and pumping tens of millions of dollars into a local economy, that kind of a model is basically unknown in this country in the United States. And when you get to New Orleans where, you know, admittedly, there's a, there are a lot of artists living and working in New Orleans, and art does play a very significant role in the cultural life of the city. But the art community in New Orleans never had its spokespersons in quite the same way that the music that that music did or that that restaurants did. And of course, if you talk to the music people, they feel themselves totally cut off from the from official them. Well, I think that's actually true. So if you can imagine that the musicians who definitely outnumber the painters and sculptors and photographers are in that boat, then you can imagine how sort of bereft people who work in the visual arts feel

in New Orleans. They just feel that they don't have anybody to speak for them. So the short part of the story is that City Hall is very happy about the project. They think we've done a really good job. They're delighted to see all these tourists in town. They love the appreciation that prospect one is getting. And indirectly, of course, all the love and appreciation New Orleans is getting. We've gotten rapturous reviews just from across the board. There hasn't been one naysayer on television and all the magazines or the newspapers. But City Hall has yet to really back that up with any kind of material support. And by contrast, the state of Louisiana was pretty upfront about saying, not only do we like this idea, but we're willing to support it as well. That's basically Mitchell Andrews office. That's Mitchell Andrews office, right? Which has, as it's to be fair, as it's main mandate to aid culture and tourism in Louisiana, right? That's right. You've been coming to New Orleans since, since what year?

1987. Oh my god, you predate me by one year. Yeah, I came down for Jazz Fest in 87. I came down for Jazz Fest in 88. Yeah, it was those were great years. But I haven't missed a Jazz Fest since and you probably haven't either. You missed one. Yeah. And you're still trying to make up for it. But I can't catch up. If they just stop one year, I could catch up. Well, now I try to come down for the essence festival too and for voodoo. In fact, like you, I've become a part-time New Orleans. I've got a house here. I've got a lot of great, great wonderful friends here in New Orleans. And you know, maybe my fear going into this was that working in New Orleans and devoting a lot of time and trying to make this kind of monumental cultural effort in the city would somehow affect my romance for the city. And the opposite is happened. I mean, it's kind of like finding out you married the right person.

Well, yeah, I mean, people do often talk about the difficulty of getting things done in New Orleans from a work standpoint. And you just carved up off for yourself the most difficult piece of work imaginable. But I've worked in I've worked in Russia. You know, I've worked in I've worked in Brazil. I've worked in China. I've done exhibitions in Mexico. I'm used to challenges. It's not something that's that's in any way foreign to me. And you know, even though New York, which is where I'm a native from, is, you know, supposed to be all about efficiency and getting things done and pragmatics, it's not always so easy to get things done in New York either. But the thing about working in New Orleans, even when you're trying to accomplish the impossible, is and I think I'm going to badly misquote Bob Dylan here, but everything is a good idea in New Orleans. And you're going to find people who just, you know, just if you're talking about something and you're passionate about it, they'll say, well, gee, I'd like to help you with that. You know, what can I do? Give me

a role. And we've had close to 300 volunteers, which, you know, in a city that's really benefited very visibly from volunteerism over the last few years since Katrina. Maybe that's not so surprising, but to me, I was a little stunned that so many people just wanted to stop what they were doing and put on one of our funny, prospect-one t-shirts and say, howdy to all the visitors or do whatever volunteer tasks we had for them. They were delighted. Well, never a bad idea to misquote Bob Dylan. We'll be back with Dan Cameron, moments from now, but first news from Outside of Humble. Warning to London and Chicago. Three months after the end of the Olympic Games, according to the British newspaper, the telegraph, new figures show the Olympic effect has been short-lived, and hotels are empty, industrial output has fallen, and the streets are quiet. Much of the pain is due to the worldwide financial crisis, but even the biggest single symbol

of the modern rise of China, the bird's nest, national stadium, stands empty, largely unused, except for a shrinking number of tourists who pay $8 to stand in it. Attempts to attract the city's main football field to the bird's nest have failed. It's simply too big for the club's crowds. Harry Henry Zhang, deputy head of the stadium's management firm, said he was concerned about whether he would recoup its investment. I have been worried, and I'm still worried, he says. Other countries have suffered post-Olympic blues. The huge investment in facilities and transport comes to a sudden end, and they can seem like expensive white elephants, huh? But China said it was going to avoid the fate of Australia and Greece after their Olympics. Unfortunately, the figures show that in some ways the Olympics expenditures made by China may have actually contributed to the downturn. Hotel occupancy rates have been lower than managers hope

for most of the year, something blamed on the more restrictive visa regime for foreigners. Olympic security, don't you know? Now, hotel prices in Beijing are actually falling as rooms empty. Many Beijing residents are enjoying the increased number of blue skies days, days when the air meets China's standards for pollution. A number of factories which were closed down for the Olympics have not been allowed to reopen, but those hoping for an Olympic dividend have been disappointed. But Chicago, go ahead and bid. And from the times of London, owned by Rupert Murdock, NATO making the same mistakes as the Soviet army says, Kabulov. What? Here we go. The Russian ambassador to Afghanistan, Zamiar Kabulov, told his British counterpart that NATO was making all the same mistakes that the Soviet army did in Afghanistan in the 1980s. When the British ambassador asked if Kabulov would explain what

these mistakes were, the reply was quick and simple. No. He told the times more recently, the Soviet Union tried to bring socialism to Afghanistan. Unfortunately, you are trying to do the same with democracy. When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan almost 30 years ago, it too wanted to overthrow a hostile government and install a more compliant regime. Nine years and 15,000 lives later, the Red Army retreated worn down by a relentless Islamist insurgency. Rusyan Aushev, head of Russia's war veterans committee served twice with the combat union and was made a hero. With the combat regiment in the Soviet Union, in Afghanistan, excuse me, excuse me again, and was made a hero of the Soviet Union. We have to ask what the Afghans want. He says, what are the people of Afghanistan received from the coalition? They live very poorly before and they still live poorly, but sometimes they also get bombed by mistake. Aushev recalls the Red Army poured 120,000 troops into Afghanistan. There's your surge.

We controlled maybe 20% of the country by day. He says, at night, the Afghans controlled all of it. But force cannot resolve this question. The Taliban is an idea and this idea has support among the local population because many problems were resolved when they ruled. Their methods were awful from a European perspective, but they got results. Ask whether British forces could beat the Taliban. He says, this is a former hero of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. He says, quote, the British have their own experience of Afghanistan. Let them read history and they can answer the question for themselves, unquote. British forces invaded Afghanistan in 1838. How to fear the Russian Empire was expanding towards British India. They were massacred as they retreated three years later. News from outside the bubble, ladies and gentlemen. Copyrighted feature of this broadcast. Help me if you cannot feel it down. And I do appreciate you being around.

Help me get my feet back on the ground. Won't you please please help me. And now my life has changed in so many ways. My independent seems to vanish in the dark. I don't know. I don't know. I just need your light. I've never done before. Help me if you can. I'm feeling down. And I do appreciate you being around. Help me get my feet back on the ground. Won't you please please help me. When I was young, I saw much younger than today. I never needed anybody's help in any way.

But now these days are gone. I'm up so self-assured. I don't know what I find. I've changed my mind. I'll open up the doors. Help me if you can. I'm feeling down. And I do appreciate you being around. Help me get my feet back on the ground. Won't you please please help me. Help me. Help me. This is Lesho continuing our conversation with Dan Cameron, the man behind the New Orleans International Artibianneal Prospect 1. Now you had the misfortune, I guess, to open this amazing show at just the time that the plug was being pulled on the American and world economy. That's right. Did that hurt? Yes, it definitely hurt.

It hurt in terms of kind of 11th hour fundraising efforts. It hurt definitely in terms of the amount of people with disposable income who might otherwise just say, hell, let's get a plane ticket and go to New Orleans for a long weekend. I don't think that there are many people who are in a position to do that as there were say six months ago. But the other side of the coin is that people who have come have been so completely knocked out. I mean, they really love not just the biennial itself, but the city. And so I feel like, well, you know, I mean, we could have done a let's say a less successful exhibition with more visitors and gotten kind of a tepid or lukewarm word of mouth. But we've had we've been beneficiaries of the opposite, which is that even though the numbers of attendees haven't been quite where we'd hoped that they would be and even though some of the financial support didn't come through at the last minute, you know, we're going to make up for all of that

over time. And I think that the way people are talking about it and what I'm hearing, other people are hearing, you know, through the grapevine about it makes me feel like, well, since we are committed to doing two or three or four more of these into the future, I think we have something really substantial to build on. Is the idea that at some point in the future, you let go of this and it becomes a self-sustaining thing and you move on to your next challenge? Or is this still a, if Dan Cameron doesn't do it, it doesn't get done? Well, traditionally, biennials are not done by a single person. They're done by a public body. So this is already doing things a little bit cock-eyed. My promise to the city was to do this for a minimum of 10 years. So I'm already at the beginning of year three and I would like to be somehow involved in shepherding the organization right up through Prospect 5 in 2016. Now, whether or not I'm going to continue to be the artistic director

from one biennial to the other is very much, you know, something that we're looking at right now. And we want to make the decision that's going to be best for New Orleans and best for Prospect New Orleans. But I would like this to be permanent. People already see this as the United States is biennial. This is our, this is the one time where this country has actually created one of these mega exhibitions that really are capable of having a huge impact on not just the cultural life of the city but also the tourist revenue coming from the city. And since New Orleans is a tourist based economy increasingly, I think that it's really worth the effort to just stay with it and try to grow it. And hopefully in another eight years we're going to be saying goodbye to Prospect 5, but we're going to be doing it with let's say half a million people having come to town to share in the festivities. You talked about the genesis of this being in the, in the bosom of the New Orleans art community. What is the New Orleans art community's response been? Well, they've

been, they've been head over heels. You know, they, they, I think it's really sparked a real entrepreneurial fire in the New Orleans art community. We have about a dozen Louisiana artists in the exhibition. So that's out of 80 out of 80 participating artists. About 12 are really from New Orleans and that may seem like a low number. But one of the reasons we took that approach is that we wanted local artists to see this as an opportunity for them to take advantage of the crowds coming to town. Like we had something like 8,000 people come for the opening weekend and out of those crowds there were about close to 50 major US museum high level patrons groups which if you, if you translate that into normal English, that means collectors. There were also museum directors. There were dealers. There were all kinds of people whose passion is art and who back up that passion with real resources. So it didn't, it didn't take a house falling on the head.

So the collective heads of the New Orleans art community realized that if they put up their own group shows, if they started some new spaces, if they took the initiative to get their own projects out there invisible, that they would benefit from all these visitors. And I think they've been about a dozen galleries that have opened in New Orleans since Prospect One has opened. So that's, I mean, in an economy that's supposedly in a downturn, at least in terms of art, I think that the New Orleans art community is probably feeling better about itself than any other art community around the country right now because art sales are way up. Galleries are doing terrific business. And artists are feeling very appreciated because complete strangers are sweeping into their studios, their galleries and buying their work and taking it home. So I think it's been a really wonderful benefit for the local art community. To some extent, I would say even more than we'd anticipate it.

Dan, to people who probably don't know New Orleans very well, you're using at least two words that may sound very foreign in that context, art and entrepreneurship. Well, I can see what that would seem a little bit strange. But in fact, New Orleans has always been home to artists. It's not been economically a viable place for ambitious young artists to make their careers because if you want to produce these mega installations or gigantic paintings or massive sculptures and you want to sell them for hundreds of thousands of dollars to the mat and to the Louvre. It's not really the place to be or at least it hasn't been because very ambitious people tend to drift to places like New York or LA, which are traditionally the hub of the US art market. But what New Orleans has is an amazing quality of life, as you know, and it's pretty reasonable.

It's pretty affordable. So the fact that there are so many artists here, despite the fact that there's not an obvious way to make a killing at your art here, doesn't seem to detour them. And artists are by their very nature entrepreneurs. What's a little bit like being a restaurant tour, I suppose, you can only go so far working for somebody else. And then there's a certain point where you just have to hang your shingle outside your front door and say, this is me and I'm open for business and I want the world to cross my front door. And New Orleans tend to be show people. They tend to be, you know, hands, exhibitionists. And so I think that the idea of pushing your own product in the midst of this international art biennial, it does actually come very natural to Orleans. And I have to say it's been really, really entertaining watching how some people have taken off with this idea and run with it. Were you the primary curator of all this stuff that we

see in Prospect One or did you have curatorial help? Well, I'm normally a curator for hire for this sort of thing. So over the last say 20 years, cities from Venice to Istanbul to even Taipei have hired me to come and do biennials for them. So they would give me a site or a set of sites and a budget and say, you know, go and do your thing and make it big and make it fantastic. In this case, because I was forming the infrastructure, getting the organization off the ground, raising the money and, you know, to being the cheap cook and bottle washer as well, there really wasn't a chance to travel the world and do that research. So I had to depend mostly on whatever ongoing research I do in the course of things. And in the end, I also did farm out a couple of projects to associates of mine, the Roy Ferdinand Selection, which is at the Jazz and Heritage Foundation, was done by a young New York curator named Martina Batan, and the extraordinary

installation of Victor Harris and Phi Gaiai, who are Martigra Indians at Noma, was done by my associate curator, whose name is Claire Tancone. But the other 78 projects, I organized and curated myself with a fantastic team who worked with me on an ongoing basis. The Victor Harris exhibit Claire included on the tour that she gave me one day. And, you know, as you know, from hanging around New Orleans, you see a lot of Martigra Indian costumes and work displayed one place or another, even in places where stuff is for sale, I guess, to raise money for the next suit. But that was maybe the, no, no, maybe. That was the most spectacular and remarkable display of it. And comprehensive in its meaning that I've ever seen of Martigra Indian work. So that was one of the highlights for me. Yeah, if you don't understand what the Martigra

Indian tradition is and believe me, it took me years to actually suss it out myself, that exhibit will get you on the right page instantly. I've had people say, you know, I don't understand what this stuff is. Is this just tourism or what are they doing? And then you just shove it into that installation and say, just use your eyes and listen and watch and think and you'll get it. And they do. Victor Harris is a unique talent. I mean, there are great Martigra Indians and great big chiefs and an extraordinary tradition of vernacular expression. But he has developed his own line, his own sort of investigation, if you want, into the African roots of masking and suiting up for Martigra. And it was really an honor to say, well, if we have one Martigra Indian in Prospect 1 and it's going to be Victor Harris, then we're going to have to go all the way and he committed to it. He said, I will make a mini retrospective of my last

decades worth of suits just for you because no one's ever taken this type of interest before. That leads me to one more question, which is, you know, it's hard, especially in areas outside New Orleans to discuss really anything regarding New Orleans without the subject of race creeping in. America sees New Orleans, I think, almost uniquely through a racial prism. And when New Orleans tried to say, yeah, but it's different here, you sometimes get a weird reaction. So what's been your experience in terms of an art project of this scope traversing those currents in New Orleans? Well, one of the things I learned pretty early on was that African-American artists and artists of African heritage elsewhere in the world, including artists working in the continent of Africa, all seem to see New Orleans and I'll break it down a little more and say

the Lower Ninth Ward as a kind of a rallying cry. So they saw the neglect of New Orleans and the failure of the government to adequately respond to New Orleans's plight as being political in nature. And you and I may agree or disagree with that, but that certainly seems to be how how blacks in America, especially those who work in the cultural industries, really internalize that whole experience. So I decided early on that that was something I was going to not in any way try to shape or mediate that I was going to simply let the artists do what they wanted to do. And I found that it really opened an extraordinary number of doors for me. I, this has been a revelation for me to be honest because I never used to go to the Lower Ninth Ward as a tourist. I mean, I would come here and hang with my friends and we would be in the, you know, the warehouse district going to all the cool galleries. It would be, you know,

uptown going to cool dinner parties. And I didn't know what the Lower Ninth Ward was. I'd never heard of it until Katrina. You know, now I spend a lot of my time there and I feel like, you know, that this is a picture of America on the brink of a major transition. And I don't want to make this just strictly about, you know, Obama coming in as the new president. But I do feel that, you know, as New Orleans goes, so goes the rest of the country. And if we sat back, not you and me, but if as a country, if we sat back and sort of watched this happen and let them not do what they were supposed to do, which is I think probably the best way to describe it, we have an opportunity now to look at ourselves, look at New Orleans, see this city as one of our greatest cultural treasures. I mean, I like to tell people it really is our Venice. And I don't mean it in the sense of it just being threatened by water. I also mean it as being a cultural treasure. If you don't know New Orleans, if you don't invest the time in curiosity and trying to figure out and understand

why it's different from the rest of the country, you never quite grasp what it is that's so essential about it. In other words, its uniqueness and its essentialness are completely inseparable. And so for me, the question of race comes up again and again on a daily basis, but not as a black white issue, really as a way of saying that, you know, we as a country are also an African country. You know, we all have African roots. It's part of our culture. It's part of who we are. And especially New Orleans, where for a century or more, you would have black, white, and then free people of color, which is a whole category that we've completely forgotten about. Now I'm beginning to understand how complex this whole issue is. And I think my own tendency is to not reduce it down to simplistic structures, but to sort of understand that this is something that as a country, we're all going through together. And we really need each other to get to the

next place, which hopefully will be a better place. So there's still pretty much two weeks for everything still up, right, until it closes. Absolutely. We have three more full weekends to go. And my prospect one is open Wednesday through Sunday at all 24 locations around New Orleans. And yes, our final, final day is Sunday, January 18th. So if people want to come to see it, and we really hope that we get a big, big outpouring of attendees during those last few days, they should really be thinking about coming the weekend of the 15, 16, 17th, and 18th to really make the most of their visit. And while we're plugging in Harry, I should also say that the whole thing is free. It's a world class biennial, and it's the kind of art that you've never seen in this country before. So many major artists and artworks in one place. And we've made the exhibition free. We've made the shuttle free to get you around town. And we've hired some local architects to design a gorgeous map of the city, which is also completely free. So if you can get

here and you can eat and you have a place to stay, the rest of it's just yours for the taking. I have to say that map is a part of what I truly admire about this project is the graphics, the signage. If you're within three blocks of a prospect one site, you'll find it because you've made it so easy for people to find. And the map is really a piece of art. Well, the three young architects that did the map, they called themselves Atelier Floufhaus, and now they've changed their name in almost rock band fashion to Studio Thalweg. So Studio Thalweg are these three architects and they really had a vision. They wanted to invest in the tradition in New Orleans of making a map for a tourist site or tourist ventures. So the world's fair has its own map. And the cotton and centennial exhibition from 1884

has its own map. And they wanted this map to be kind of an amalgam, amalgamation, sorry, of different historic views of New Orleans all sort of lumped together. So if you look on the artsy side, you get this extraordinary view of the city that's cobbled together from about 140 different images that are all tiled through Photoshop. But it's done from above in the air over the Lower Ninth Ward. So the close-up view shows you exactly how and where and why the flooding happen. You suddenly see Mr. Goh and the industrial canal and you can see all the levy breaks with a degree of clarity that you can't in any other form that I've come across. Then you flip the map over and suddenly you're looking at art city. You're looking at a city where there's something like 120 venues to go look at art any day of the week. And now only 24 of those are hours. The rest of it is all just the museums and community art centers that New Orleans already has. These sorts of ad hoc spaces that cropped up for prospect one. And then the really strong

infrastructure of galleries that have always been here. So even New Orleans, I think, are really surprised to look at the map and say, wow, I didn't know we had so much art going on in the city. Yeah, I know people who said, wow, that's us. You've held up in many ways a really remarkable mirror to the city in addition to everything else you've accomplished. Oh, thank you. Congratulations, Dan. I heard about this. We met and had some dinners together. And you know, it's the the mark of a of a true visionary that I kind of knew what you were about. But I had no idea until I saw it. What what all you you intended and accomplished. So prospect one is is still going strong until the 18th of January and you're you're taking it out with a jazz funeral. How New Orleans? It's the only way to do it really. It's you get you have to say goodbye and you have to let go. So in New Orleans, the right way to do that is with jazz

funeral. But of course, Dan Cameron, thank you so much for joining me today on this broadcast. Good luck with the remainder of prospect one. Can't wait for prospect two. Thanks. Bye bye. And now, ladies and gentlemen, the apologies of the week. The Sudanese government says it's received an apology from the French government on statements by President Sarkozy earlier this month in which he warned that time is running out for his Sudanese counterpart. The Sudanese minister of state at the foreign ministry in London says Sarkozy's advisor for African fairs Bruno Schubert apologized over remarks that Sarkozy said the president of Sudan has very little time to decide his fate is in his hands regarding the progress or lack thereof in Darfur.

Herman Rosenblatt, the Miami Beach retiree and Holocaust survivor, made up his amazing story that while being held in a concentration campy young girl threw apples to him over the fence which helped him survive. He's now issued an apology for that fake memoir through the New York Times. I brought good feelings to a lot of people and I brought hope to many. My motivation was to make good in this world. My dreams Roma will always throw me an apple. But now I know it is only a dream. And they were pairs. No. Dayline Hawaii and Aleya family, sorry, a family's outraged after finding the coffins of their loved ones on earth at a cemetery over the weekend in Oahu. They were stunned to find the coffins when they arrived to put Christmas flowers on the graves of their loved ones at the Valley of the Temple's cemetery. I would never think they're going to visit your mom and giving your flowers and expect something like that. Said one of the children. They've been visiting the Valley of the Temple's grave since 1997 where his mother,

uncle and aunt were buried on Sunday they found their headstones thrown to the side and coffins exposed. The cemetery apologized and claimed the casket carrying the mother slid out a place as they were digging a new grave. Oops. Filmmaker George Butler is alive during Charlie Rose's annual New Year's Eve tribute on PBS to notable figures who died during the year, he included Butler, whose 1977 film Pumping Iron put Arnold Schwarzenegger on the map. The PBS show had confused him with another George Butler, the longtime jazz record executive, who died in April. What's out about the mistake? Is it Rose and Butler, our old friends? Rose apologized at the opening of Thursday's show. We apologized him and his friends and looked forward to having him on the program in the New Year. Said Charlie. It's the price of being Charlie Rose's friend. And in the aftermath of a simmering controversy over the creation of a locked isolation room in the basement of the block Island Road Island schools who pretended

Leslie Ryan has resigned as we know it was wrong to put locks on the chill room. She said. She was not aware the room ran a file of state regulations involving the restraint of students. And apologized. The apologies of the week ladies and gentlemen, a copyrighted feature of this broadcast. This is Lesho kind of changing gears a little bit. Maybe some of you had a more interesting holiday than the host of this broadcast because my wife broke her nose and New Orleans. Another story for another time. But maybe if you have an interesting holiday experience, you might want to share it with the listeners. This would be a good time to wow. That didn't take long. Somebody has the number and speed dial. All right. It's on the newsmaker line. Let's let's hope there's an interesting holiday story. Hi, you're on the air. Yes,

it is. Who's this? I don't know whether you recall in some bothersome Michael from London. Yes, I do recall we talked a little while ago and you actually listened to this program or something over there, right? Yes, something like that. My name is actually bad isn't Michael. I noticed I was referred to on publicity for your show at bad isn't Martin. Well, I wouldn't worry about any publicity for this show because it nobody sees it. But great good to talk to Barrett. Was yours a good holiday experience this year? Well, I mean, for the kickoff, Kelly, we don't call it the holidays. I suppose that one of the difficulties speaking to a Yankee dooday and the other side of the pond, you know, we just call it Christmas. Why do you do that? Well, because it will eventually that's what it means. The holidays for me can't just out

images of going to woe or moe, enjoying other cultures. Not something that Americans would be all that familiar with culture in general. But what did George Bernard Shaw say? You know, we were two countries separated by, well, culture, basically, and three and a half thousand miles, thank God. No, no, we had, we had what I wanted to think of as a tradition or English Christmas here in many old England. And what does that consist of? That that consist of it raining. It's pretty gray and cold and you get terrible service in restaurants. Some people with horrible teeth, I believe, is how you view us over there. Yes, probably pretty accurately. Did you watch a lot of Telly? I understand Brit, Brit sit home and watch a lot of Telly at Christmas time. Look, I, you know, I watched Telly 24-7 more at Christmas, really. You know,

Christmas to me, I'm about the Telly. It ain't about all then trackings. It's about, you know, traditional thing. You know, when I was growing up, we didn't have no Telly, you know, we would stand in the parlour and, you know, listen to the king giving his traditional Christmas message. What he was doing in our parlour, I don't know. I was going to ask. But then again, we had we had church in our spare room for a while. Yeah, well, that, that was a drinking problem. That's, that doesn't need to be. Yeah, but, you know, we, we, we didn't have no Telly. We had simple games, shoving in us in Nunu, quack, quack Arthur, call me an addict, or which, you know, just sit around coughing up blood, really. You know, we, we, we made our own fun, Harry. What did you do? We set fire to a hobo one year, but everyone gathered around us. It was, it wasn't about

mummy, and, and, and stuffing your face and watching Telly. One, one year, my mum sent me, she said, I've got the most wonderful prison for you this year. She said, come into the parlour. I went into the parlour and there was my dad's home from the war and pushed me mum over the characters. I wanted a motorbike you silly Care, you're mum? Yeah, of course. Look, there's, there's no getting away from it. Ten of vision is a big part of it. There are people who who valiantly try to keep religion in Christmas. Why? Why? They have to spoil it for the rest of us. I don't know, but the celebrity Christmas is it? You know, you would do like to peak and see how our battles are getting on there. We've been rocks over here. You might remember them. Power and Madonna have splitted up. We hear about that over there. Yes, we got the news. Well, the wonderful thing is

it's love that they've come together at Christmas and she went over to his estate and they all enjoyed a massive turkey. He put sweat to way on the DVD after... Have the mills? Have the mills McCartney? Yes. Yes. Well, Paul is very kind. He bought a lovely, julin-crusted leg. It was only a stocking filler, but the truth is he got a plane. Really? A plane, yeah, and a razor for the other leg. Now, I mean, he's quite happy to put his hand in his pocket for it. If he can only squeeze it past hers. You're bad. You're bad. I'm bad, aren't I? You are. Bad. Yeah. Bad to the bone. Did you do anything special this particular year that set it apart from other Christmases? Well, yeah, what I did, because we had a connoisseur and because of the credit crumb. Yeah. I had my grandchildren over and we played some of the older traditional games from Christmas.

You know, I found an old grand theft auto from 2003 in the attic. That must have been wonderful. It was really lovely. That's Margaret's sister, Revon, over. She's single. Still a bit of a pain having around the house, but you know, she, I'm telling you what, though, she's quite a catch for any elderly man out there. She's 83, but she's got the body of an eight-year-old of Celia. Wow. So when you say economising, did you make your own gifts or did you do it? Well, yeah, we do, well, whole brew, no brewing for a kickoff. I don't spend all that money on, you know, beer and that. We do what I've been, I've been the eco-eco-mental for years. Really? Yeah, I've thought fermented cider from apples. Yeah. And what I've done with my plums over the years is nobody's business, you know. But last year's brew was pretty horrible. I've been loving it to drink it or create something fancy. But you know, this year we did, we had a bumper

crop of potatoes. So we've done a potato cocktail with ice and a slice of potato on the side. With potato beer. Yeah. And the gorgeous white, I say wine, it's more potato, really. But for the kids who come up, my grandkids, we've done a potato smoothie, which it's mash. Yeah. It's mash, essentially. But, you know, we may be had enough of potato-based drinks now to be honest. Do you have eggnog? Yes, we do. We were fine with the egg dip, but we weren't too certain what the the gnog dip was. So we just had egg in the end and we went out with a bit of bacon and toast. Very traditional. Very traditional. Well, you scared me because I thought you were going to say you had potato gnog. No, we didn't have potato gnog. That would be gilled in the lily, harry, no. We're fairly limited with what we can do with the potatoes, adding the gnog dip,

especially as we don't know what the gnog is, would be impossible. But the thing is, you know, when it comes to the present, the thing is, you're in them, it's from your wife, you never know what to get them. They're so difficult to choose. It's always wrong. Yes, it is. Having said that numb chuck has probably was a little bit silly this year. But, you know, they give me a credit note. Next year, I might just wrap up the receipts. You know, and give it but, no, I mean, what we do is we do economise, as I say, for example, doing the house, decorating the house. I mean, it's secret, I bought a plastic wreath. Really? And what happens is, it doubled for any friends I might lose in the cold snack. You know, I'll just take off the Merry Christmas shove on an RIP. And, you know, it does, you know, for the throughout the year. Hmm. Yeah. But that's a warm thought to keep you cozy.

It is. Yeah. They wouldn't want me to spend any money on them. I didn't, when they were alive. There you go. See why? Why change now? So, Barry, it's not just Christmas, but it's New Year's, and people in this country have a tradition of making New Year's resolutions. Do you have any such resolutions over there? What I'm thinking of doing is I'm going to get about another 10 copies of your songs of the Bushman. Oh, I'm determined to do that for all my guests, tomorrow night, coming over for a do at my house, because, you know, I always need coasters, that's army. Well, that's... I do have resolutions to be, to be serious. Yes. But, for the sake of having a drink and a smoke in them, if I can just do more of that in 2009, I should be much, much happier. Interesting. Yeah. Losing weight. Yeah. Losing weight. All the celebrities are doing it. It's a big thing. The newspapers over in London. Of course. Yeah. The Spice Girls. Yeah.

They're considering losing another eight stone of excess. They've been carrying around with them. They're going to set Jerry Hollywood again. Did you see? Yeah, I did. I didn't see it coming, but I saw it going away. No, but I am. I'm going to go to the gym. Really? I found all the machines a little bit confusing. You know, you use the gym and the first one that always proxies me is putting the money in the locker. Once I get through that, it's a flip. Not me. You know, to resistance this, press this button, measure your heart rate. Not me. You know, it's in post. There is one machine. I'm absolutely superb at the gym. That's the candy machine. I'm a reception. I want to have some dead end at that. I bet you are. Now, Barry, when you talk about going to the gym, share with the listeners exactly if this is not an important question. How old you are? Well, it is a pertinent question. I made it two years away. Wow.

So, when you go to the gym, do you have a routine, aside from going to the candy machine? Yeah, the routine is basically trying not to die. That's my main routine. If you can stay alive and come out the end of it, I'll call that a result. Wow. Speaking of which, you mentioned the credit crunch. Did you get hit this year by the financial disaster that's affected so many people? Well, yes. It's an absolute disaster. It's left a massive hole in my pocket, which, you know, does have its benefit. But I just made that up on the spurs. No, that's very good. You're pretty spry for 82. Yeah, it was quite good, wasn't it? It was. No, it's a disaster, really, over here. Everyone is huddling around and just trying to make too. Well, as I understand it, only the good Lord can make do. But good luck with that. Do you have any holiday message for your American friends?

Well, yes. I would just like to say, you know, that I think Christmas and New Year, that this, you know, in this world, it's all about love. All I want is love in this world. I'm like, you know, neighbor to turn to neighbor. And so, you know, happy Christmas, mate. Happy New Year. And I will return that power drill soon and trimmed in the Burnham that the council had written to you about on at least three occasions to my knowledge. And then maybe try and prove some of the hedge that keeps growing over. That's all I want from neighbor to neighbor. That's very beautiful, Barry. Thank you so much for calling. Barry from London, calling in on our NewsBaker Live. Barry from Watford. Happy New Year, you too, Barry. A tip of the show shoppo to the San Diego Pittsburgh Chicago and Hawaii desks.

Thanks to Dan Cameron from Prospect One New Orleans. Barry from Watford and London is Alex Low. The show returns next week at the same time over these same stations and over the same McGillah everywhere else. The show comes to you from Century of Progress Productions and originates through the facilities of KCRW Santa Monica, a community recognized around the world as the home of the homeless.